How To: 6 Tips for Going Totally Neon

Ready to get bright? Totally Neon is Busy Beaver’s newest special finish, and it’s perfect for adding some major pop to your designs! With Totally Neon, your black and white artwork is transformed into a mix of five super bright colors on buttons, magnets, bottle openers or mirrors.

Since Totally Neon is different from any of the other finishes we offer, you may be wondering how well it will work with your artwork. Read on for six quick tips to pairing artwork with Totally Neon and creating designs that look their fluorescent best!

1. Black and White

Original black and white artwork transformed into totally neon buttons!

Remember that Totally Neon is available only for black print buttons, so be sure that the image plan to use is already set up as black and white. Sorry, full color images– Because colored paper distorts the look of color ink, full color artwork isn’t something we can pair with Totally Neon.

But what if you’ve got a color image that you want to turn black and white? Most image editing program will allow you to convert to grayscale– Check out tutorials for how to do that in Photoshop, Windows Paint and Preview for Mac.

2. Go Bold

The best images for Totally Neon are generally very bold black and white designs. Dark grays and blacks look super cool contrasted against the five fluorescent paper colors.

Do keep in mind that shades of gray will dull the look of Totally Neon. To take full advantage of how bright these colors are, we suggest using a design with plenty of white space.

3. Nice and Simple

Neon buttons show under black light

Think your design is too simple to make an interesting button? The color pop of Totally Neon can transform even the simplest design into something unmissable. Single words, graphic logos, and simple graphics look great on the mix of bright backgrounds.

4. Make it Pop

When planning a design for Totally Neon, remember that it’s the white areas of your design that will appear as the bright background colors. Consider whether you want the fluorescent shade to be the main color of the image, or appear as a “pop” against a darker black background. Both can be really effective– it all depends on the look you’re going for. Try inverting your image to see which makes the most impact, or order both versions!

5. It’s a Rainbow

Don’t forget that Totally Neon includes a mix of five fluorescent background colors. For every other special finish or paper color option we offer, different background colors are considered different run of buttons, but with Totally Neon you get bulk pricing for all five background colors! Since it comes as a mix, consider how your design will look on all five background colors– yellow, green, pink, light orange and dark orange.

6. Take a Risk

If a bright, neon rainbow background isn’t the perfect excuse to try something a little crazy, we don’t know what is! Think outside the box to try out artwork that nobody would expect to be paired with a fluorescent background. Maybe most photos would look a little odd paired with neon, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have one that’s the exception. How about a fluorescent skyline, or bright colored zebra, like the ones pictured above. Try something new— you may be amazed at the results!